Criminology 50(3)

Criminology, August 2012: Volume 50, Issue 3

Racial–Ethnic Threat, Out-Group Intolerance, And Support For Punishing Criminals: A Cross-National Study
Graham C. Ousey and James D. Unnever

Scholars often have used the group threat thesis to explain why punitiveness varies across places. This research regularly has found that punitiveness is harsher in places with a larger minority population. Yet researchers only have had a rudimentary grasp of why this is the case. Moreover, most prior research has focused only on the United States, giving us little knowledge of whether the group threat thesis is a viable explanation of cross-national differences in punitiveness. In the current study, we postulate that the relative size of the out-group population affects punitiveness indirectly, via its impact on individual intolerance toward ethnic out-groups. We test this thesis cross-nationally with data from individuals residing in 27 European countries. Our findings are consistent with the argument that greater racial/ethnic diversity at the country level affects individuals’ attitudes toward minority out-groups, which in turn increases their support for severely punishing criminal offenders.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Romantic Dissolution, Offending, And Substance Use During The Transition To Adulthood
Matthew Larson and Gary Sweeten

Recent studies have directed attention to the nature of romantic involvement and its implications for offending over the life course. However, this body of research has overlooked a defining aspect of nonmarital romantic relationships: Most come to an end. By drawing on insights from general strain theory, the age-graded theory of informal social control, and research on delinquent peer exposure, we explore the impact of romantic dissolution on offending and substance use during late adolescence and emerging adulthood. Using data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we arrive at three general conclusions: 1) Experiencing a breakup is directly related to a range of antisocial outcomes; 2) the effect of a breakup is dependent on post-breakup relationship transitions; and 3) a breakup is associated with increases in offending and substance use among males and in substance use among females. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for the future of research on romantic involvement and crime over the life course.

Traits And States: Integrating Personality And Affect Into A Model Of Criminal Decision Making
Jean-Louis Van Gelder and Reinout E. De Vries

We propose and test a model of criminal decision making that integrates the individual differences perspective with research and theorizing on proximal factors. The individual differences perspective is operationalized using the recent HEXACO personality structure. This structure incorporates the main personality traits, but it carries the advantage of also incorporating Self-Control within its personality sphere, and an additional trait termed Honesty-Humility. Furthermore, the model offers a new perspective on proximal predictors, “states,” of criminal decisions by adding affect (i.e., feelings) to the rational choice–crime equation. The proposed model is tested using scenario data from a representative sample of the Dutch population in terms of gender, age, education level, and province (N = 495). As predicted by the model, personality was both directly and indirectly related to criminal decision making. Specifically, the traits Emotionality, Self-Control, and Honesty-Humility were mediated by both affect and rational choice variables. Conscientiousness operated only indirectly on criminal decision making via rational choice. Together, the findings support a trait-state model of criminal decision making.

Controlling Other People'S Children: Racialized Views Of Delinquency And Whites’ Punitive Attitudes Toward Juvenile Offenders
Justin T. Pickett and Ted Chiricos

The juvenile justice system was founded on, and until recently developed around, the idea that society should afford delinquents more leniency and rehabilitative care than adult criminals because of their lower levels of physical and cognitive development and, thus, diminished culpability for law violations and higher amenability to treatment. The past four decades, however, have witnessed a sustained movement to recriminalize delinquency through the enactment of policies that treat juvenile offenders more like their adult counterparts. Feld (1999a) and others have argued that this punitive turn in juvenile justice is in part a result of the racialization of delinquency and violent victimization in the post–Civil Rights era. This study provides the first test of the key assumption underlying this thesis, namely, that Whites’ support for getting tough with juvenile offenders is in part tied to racialized views of youth crime. Drawing on data from a recent national survey, we examine the extent to which relative racial typifications about delinquency and victimization, as well as racial resentment, are associated with general punitiveness toward juvenile offenders as well as support for lower minimum ages of criminal justice jurisdiction. Regression results show that Whites who hold such typifications and those who are more racially resentful are both more likely to embrace punitive youth justice policies and favor transfers for younger offenders. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Differential Susceptibility? Immigrant Youth And Peer Influence
Stephanie M. Dipietro and Jean Marie Mcgloin

There is reason to suspect that lower levels of exposure to criminogenic peer-based risks help explain why immigrant youth are less involved in crime and violence. However, it also is possible that if and when they do encounter these risks, immigrant youth are more vulnerable to them than are native-born youth. Drawing from literature on the adaptation experiences of immigrant adolescents, we hypothesize that immigrant youth will be relatively more susceptible to the effects of both 1) exposure to deviant peers and 2) unstructured and unsupervised socializing with peers when compared with their nonimmigrant counterparts.Using a sample of approximately 1,800 adolescents from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) study, we find support for our first hypothesis but not the second.Specifically, in both cross-sectional and longitudinal models, we find that exposure to deviant peers has a greater impact on violence among immigrant youth than it does for native-born youth. Furthermore, this pattern of results is supported with supplemental, sensitivity analysis using the AddHealth data. In contrast, there are no statistically significant differences across immigrant generation status with regard to the effect of informal socializing with peers on violence.

Undocumented Immigrants As Perceived Criminal Threat: A Test Of The Minority Threat Perspective
Xia Wang

The link between immigration and crime has garnered considerable attention from researchers. Although the weight of evidence suggests that immigration is not linked to crime, the public consistently views immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, as criminal and thus a threat to social order. However, little attention has been paid to why they are perceived this way. By drawing on the minority threat perspective, this article investigates the effects of objective and perceptual measures of community context on perceived criminal threat from undocumented immigrants. Analyses of data collected from four Southwest states and the U.S. Census show that the perceived size of the undocumented immigrant population, more so than the actual size of the immigrant population and economic conditions, is positively associated with perceptions of undocumented immigrants as a criminal threat. Additional analyses show that objective measures of community context do not affect native respondents’ perceptions of the size of the undocumented immigrant population. The study's findings and their implications for theory, research, and policy are discussed.

Measuring The Threat Of Global Crime: Insights From Research By The League Of Nations Into The Traffic In Women
Paul Knepper

Despite increasing concern about the threat of global crime, it remains difficult to measure. During the 1920s and 1930s, the League of Nations conducted the first social-scientific study of global crime in two studies of the worldwide traffic in women. The first study included 112 cities and 28 countries; researchers carried out 6,500 interviews in 14 languages, including 5,000 with figures in the international underworld. By drawing on archival materials in Geneva and New York, this article examines the role of ethnography in developing a social-science measure of global crime threats. The discussion covers the Rockefeller grand jury and formation of the Bureau of Social Hygiene; the League's research in Europe, the Americas, and the Mediterranean; controversy concerning the use of undercover researchers; the League's research in Asia; and the end of the Bureau. The League's experience demonstrates the promise of multisite ethnography in research about global crime as well as the difficulty of mapping crime on a global scale.

The Power Of Diversion: Intermediate Sanctions And Sentencing Disparity Under Presumptive Guidelines
Brian D. Johnson and Stephanie M. Dipietro

Fiscal constraints and shifting political climates in corrections have recently led to a renewed interest in intermediate punishments. Despite their growing prevalence, though, relatively little empirical research has examined the judicial use of alternative sanctions as a sentencing option. By using 3 years of data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS), this study investigates little-researched questions regarding the use of sentencing alternatives among offenders and across contexts. Results indicate that male and minority offenders are the least likely to receive intermediate sanctions, both as a diversionary jail or prison sentence and as a substitute for probation. The probability of receiving an intermediate sanction also varies significantly across judges and court contexts and is related to county-level funding for these programs, among other factors. Findings are discussed as they relate to contemporary theoretical perspectives on the perceived suitability of intermediate punishments and on the unique role that offender agency plays in the sentencing of these cases. Directions for future research are discussed.

The Ecology Of Gang Territorial Boundaries
P. Jeffrey Brantingham, George E. Tita, Martin B. Short and Shannon E. Reid

Within any type of system, the actors in the system inevitably compete over resources. With competition comes the possibility of conflict. To minimize such effects, actors often will partition the system into geographic territories. It is against the larger ecological backdrop of competition and conflict that we examine territory formation among urban street gangs. Although previous studies have examined the social and built environment where gangs form, and how the presence of a gang influences local levels of violence, we know little about how competitive interactions are tied to the formation and maintenance of gang territories. We use formal spatial Lotka–Volterra competition models to derive hypotheses about competition-driven territory formation. By using data on 563 between-gang shootings, involving 13 rival street gangs in the Hollenbeck Policing Division of Los Angeles, we show that violence strongly clusters along the boundaries between gangs in a way that is quantitatively predicted by the theory. The results suggest that even weak competitive interactions between gangs are sufficient to drive gang territory formation without recourse to other processes or assumptions.